SoundCon, LLC has analysed employment data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and discovered a surprising correlation between trends in the video game industry -- specifically the ascent of casual, mobile and social gaming -- and unusually strong growth in US employment for composers and music directors.

“There are over 150,000 games on the app store alone, ranging from immensely popular games like Angry Birds or Plants vs Zombies to small, independently developed games like Super Hexagon or Ear Monsters,” said Brian Schmidt, SoundCon’s Executive Director and author of the study. “Virtually every one of those games has music, requiring the work of a video game composer.”

The report states:“… the timing of the rise of mobile, casual and social gaming and the increase in Composers and Music Director employment presents a strong case for causation, and, frankly, it makes perfect sense. As thousands upon thousands of new game developers began to create tens of thousands of new video games for millions of new casual and mobile game players, they needed thousands of new composers to create music for them”

The BLS predicts that there will be 32,000 new music director or composer job openings over the next ten years.